NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among people with a
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection
caught in the general community (rather than in hospital), more
than 20 percent were dead within a year, according to new
research findings.

Dr. Samy Suissa told Reuters Health that doctors have to be
on the lookout "for increasingly frequent community-acquired
MRSA infections that too often turn out to be fatal."

MRSA infections used to be seen only in hospitalized
patients, but nowadays they are occurring more frequently in
the general population.

ADVERTISEMENT

Suissa, at McGill University Health Center, Montreal,
Canada, and colleagues used a UK general practice database to
identify 1439 MRSA patients diagnosed in the community from
2001 to 2004. Each patient was compared with up to 10 matched
patients without a MRSA diagnosis.

All of the subjects were older than 18 years of age, the
average age was 70 years, and none had been hospitalized within
the previous 2 years. The patients with MRSA were more likely
to have other medical conditions, the researchers report in the
online medical journal BMC Medicine.

After 1 year of follow-up, 21.8 percent of MRSA patients
had died compared to only 5.0 percent of those in the non-MRSA
group.

"Our study suggests that MRSA can be a potentially serious
infection in the community leading to increased mortality," the
investigators conclude.

They add that the "judicious use of antibiotics is
essential to prevent these quite deadly community-acquired MRSA
infections," given the emergence of antibiotic resistance when
antibiotics are used indiscriminately.